Immigration Reform and Policy with Sean Spicer and Former Immigration Judge Art Arthur
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Welcome to another episode of Breaking Battlegrounds. I'm Sam Stone. Our first guest today is Sean Spicer, 28th White House Press Secretary, the author of four bestselling books and the host of the Sean Spicer Show. You can follow his work at SeanSpicer.com or on X at Sean Spicer. Sean, welcome to the program.

Good to be with you guys. Thanks for having me. You had a very interesting piece. Executive orders are a good start, but we need lasting immigration reform. Here's where to start. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Because I thought we both thought you were spot on, that executive orders can go so far, but we really need legislative action right now on immigration.

Yeah, well, first, thank you. I appreciate the kind compliment. I was hoping people would agree with that. Here's what I mean. Well, because what can be done through executive order can be undone through executive order. And we saw that. We've seen that pretty much with every president. But when President Biden came in, he made a point of on day one saying, I'm going to undo all these border policies to President Trump. He's very proud of it.

So then what President Trump did, he came back in and obviously we did everything and then stepped it up a notch. That's great. And I think President Trump highlighted the real like that, in fact, that there's a lot that he could do that when President Biden told us there was nothing that that was not true. But the reality is.

All of this great work that he's doing can be undone. You know, God forbid we fall back into the trap again. A new president could come in and say, you know, I'm not going to uphold it. I'm going to undo it, whatever. But if Congress, especially now, while we have the White House, the House and the Senate,

can codify these things in law, then a new president can't undo those things. We've been talking about immigration reform for decades. Well, we've now, I think, gotten much closer to being on the same page as a party. I think we recognize a lot of the reforms that need to get done. And it's sort of like, you know those game shows where the dollar amount goes up and then you can bank it

I feel like we need to bank the wins right now. Great analogy. I kept thinking about it. That's exactly what I kept thinking. You watch those guys, and at the end of the game, it's like, well, you've only banked this much. I think it was the weakest link.

But I kept thinking to myself, like, bank the wins, guys. We know we need more agents. We know we need more judges. We know we need to reform some of these laws. And so, you know, I keep looking at the Democrats who say, oh, we missed our window on whatever. I forgot there were a couple pet issues that they had when Biden came in.

Um, Obama did the same thing. And I think that we, in the first term of Trump missed our window on a couple of things because we thought we had to start with healthcare. Maybe we did, but I think we should have started better with taxes and gotten a better deal out of the gate for a lot of other reasons. Um,

And so this time, right now, like immigration, we're all on the same page. We know what we want. Don't waste any time. Lock it in and get it done. What is the best strategy for this to be for Trump to pull in the leadership of both the House and Senate and say, look, I want a single bill on the border wall. I want a single bill on the border patrol, you know, X, Y, Z. And just put these single subject issues in front of them and say, vote on it.

Let's just get this in law. It always seems like Republicans want to do this grand master plan. Why don't we start doing single subject legislation? You're going to pass these three things tomorrow, these three things next week. Boom, boom, boom. Hey, I'm for that. But I also think that like, I mean, so every time you go up for a vote, a couple of things, it's in the house, it's a little easier to some degree. I mean,

I mean, they got a slimmer majority, but it's easier to get bills on the floor because they run it. In the Senate, there's always this issue of how much time. Okay. And so for that reason, here's where I would argue, because I'm fine with that. If we want to do it, if we know we got five things we agree on and we go one, two, three, four, five, bye. But I also go for the sake of time and in the interest of like expediency.

expediency. Let's take those five, put a bow on it and get five done. Yes. And then say, Hey, I know six and seven are a little contentious. Let's put six and seven independently. And they, but like take the five things that we agree on. We know we need more judges. We know we need more CBP eyes and ice agents. Um, there's a bunch of things we know we need to reform a couple of things, uh, in terms of like who we let in and why. So, you know, let's, let's do that and get it done and lock it in. But I, I don't,

at the end of the day, I get your point, but we have a slim majority in the House and we have a time issue in the Senate. So I would rather get a more

comprehensive bill where it's like we agree on these seven things let's get the seven locked in and then we come back and finish 89 or whatever that number is but like instead of fighting over 89 or six and seven get get whatever that is the first five the first seven things lock it in and and bank it as a you know like the game show and go from there but the more that we have these discussions about well maybe this and maybe that we're wasting time because

there's a problem i hope i believe the political landscape looks good in you know in two years out the senate looking better uh... especially with the retirement of tina smith in minnesota and i gary peters in michigan for the republicans but it's not guaranteed

We are guaranteed for two years. We know we have a majority. And I don't want to look back in two years and say, I wish we had done the comprehensive stuff. I agree. One of the things you touch on in your Newsweek piece that I don't think most people understand is how difficult it is for Border Patrol to recruit agents, particularly when they're going to be assigned to places like Douglas, Arizona, Eagle Pass. You know, it's one thing if you're thinking I'm going to be assigned to the Tijuana crossing and I can live in San Diego.

But a lot of these locations, it's tough to get people who want to go live in the middle of nowhere. That's just that, the training. You can't – this isn't like a – with all doers, I'm not trying to belittle it, but like it's not a fast food job where you say, hey, we need – we have five openings. Five applicants come in. They're qualified. You hire them. You got to get these guys qualified, trained. Then your point is it's an additional burden depending on where.

Um, so I, I agree with you. And that's my point though, is that guys, if we don't lock this in, because here's the thing, let's say we lose one house. Um,

in 2026. Well, now the Democrats are going to say, well, okay, we'll give you your boy, your vice agents, we'll give you your border agents, we're going to give you some judges, but we want citizenship for, you know, X number or whatever it is, this many dreamers or whatever it is. And that's my point is that you were, we're going to lose the ability. We're going to have to deal then in a way that, you know, I wouldn't want to. Yeah.

We have Sean Spicer. He's also the host of The Sean Spicer Show. Sean, something that's been brought to my attention by just random people I talk to, and you have probably the best insight on this. You have reporters, former reporters of big entities like Chris Saliza. You have Chris Cuomo, News Nation, your partner, Crying Mark Halperin. And they all of a sudden seem to become objective.

I mean, it's amazing. I don't think they're pro-Trump, but they just seem to have a more objective take on the news of the day regarding Trump. They don't seem to be spiraling that he is a threat to the world. Is that a fair assessment? Because we're hearing that a lot from people we talk to. So I think there are some, you know, crystallism maybe being a good example of who have sort of faced a reality of –

getting outside of a bubble and saying, you know what? The American people, it wasn't like just Trump didn't make this up out of anywhere. Like there's actually like he he was the American people. I mean, you look at these polls, not just during the election season, but even now, 60 percent of the American people support mass deportations. It's the Biden administration helped codify a lot of the thinking for people who might have said, I kind of agree, but whatever. But when we saw the

Drugs and crime coming into neighborhoods that may not have seen it in the past because of how illegal immigration plays out. We saw the woke culture stuff go way too far that people said, all right, you know what? Trump is speaking for a lot of people and we didn't fully appreciate it.

Sean, one of your other pieces you've done recently, you talked a little bit about Elon Musk and Doge and the left's meltdown over them. This morning, Axios came out with a focus group where they brought in 11 independents who didn't vote for Trump. Here in Arizona. And 100% of them agreed with what they're doing, with what Doge is doing. 100%. I love that. All of them, as you said, I found that little focus group fascinating.

But the other part that I thought was great is they gave him a long leash when it came to it. They were like, because here's the difference. If you're busy and getting things done, right? And let's just say that I've asked you to go do something. And I, but I'm watching you like, I'm like, hey, can you, can you go pick up that?

pan over in the corner and yet in my little window from my office i'm watching you you know clean the kitchen and take out the trash i'm like okay i know he hasn't gotten to that specific task but man the guy's busy and he's getting things done and trump right now is getting things done every day we're hearing from our president we're hearing about what he's doing to secure the country to address you know threats that we face all this stuff so it's sort of like okay

I know you haven't gotten to all the issues yet, but it's not because you're asleep or napping or who knows what. You're getting it done. And I think that's what people are seeing. I've been in politics 30 years, and we often deal with a situation where people say a ton of stuff on the campaign trail.

And then start talking about, like, you know, unfortunately, because of a... It's one excuse after another. And right now, President Trump is just going through. And even the Democrats, whether it's like Paul Begala or Rahm Emanuel, some of the prominent Democratic strategists. James Carville. James Carville has said, you know what? I may not like it, but he's getting it done and he's doing what he said. And that's where I think Trump's just crushing it. People are saying, yeah, he did tell us he was going to do this.

And he's doing it. You were the 28th White House press secretary, Donald Trump's first one. How much different is the media ecosystem today compared to when you were press secretary? Because now you have all the podcasts. You have X that's open. You know, these various things. How much different would that have been for your job back then? Oh, dare to dream. Ha, ha, ha, ha.

I mean, it's night and day. I mean, look, I think Caroline Levin's doing a phenomenal job. So full stop on that. But, you know, so full period, full stop. But I would have killed for the environment that she's in right now. You have outlets that are there's a whole different army. I mean, you guys mentioned my show. I've got two shows. I do a live show every morning on my YouTube channel.

at nine o'clock and i have a show that i do it six o'clock that very political you can watch on my youtube channel every night and i i mean i've got i i have uh... extreme type that it is on a cable uh... network as well but like we can do that stuff that that didn't exist eight years ago uh... and and now you think about you know everybody from tucker carlson again by gino uh... megan kelly like people are out there

creating content and having discussions that on platforms in ways that just didn't happen before. I've got thousands of people that listen to my show every night.

And that wasn't an option. When I left the White House, I did a bunch of stuff, and then I finally joined Newsmax for three years. And then I got this offer that said, hey, we want to produce a show for you. You'll own the content. You get to stream it everywhere. And I was like, oh, hey, that's a lot better. I'd actually like to build something that I own than just work for somebody else.

On a cable outlet, look, here's the dirty secret about cable. The average age is like 68 years old when people watch cable news. So young people are not going there. And even, to be honest with you, the average age of my YouTube show is like 57.

Even older people are going because it's, you know, they're cutting the cord. They're streaming on a variety of things. And they also want to get it when they want. So if you want to watch my show from last night right now, go for it. You don't have to DVR it and hope that you did it and whatever or wait for today's episode. You could binge it if you wanted. I don't know why you would, but, you know, I'm not saying, look.

teach their own. And that environment just didn't exist. We're political junkies, so that is the kind of thing we've been. Sean Spicer, thank you so much for joining us, folks. Follow him on X at Sean Spicer at SeanSpicer.com. We really appreciate having you on the program. I love it, guys. Thank you. Have a great weekend. I'll catch up with you soon. Thanks. Bye-bye. All right. Imagine this. You're running for president. Yes, president.

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Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds, folks. News came out yesterday that the Chinese government is still in office.

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We're continuing on now with Art Arthur, internationally recognized expert on national security and immigration, resident fellow in law and policy at the Center for Immigration Studies, and a former U.S. immigration judge. Art Arthur, welcome to the program. Thanks so much for having me. I greatly appreciate it. So you have been an immigration judge in the immigration court in York, Pennsylvania.

Tell our audience, which doesn't understand, because they hear this a lot about asylum seekers and so forth, what does an immigration judge do? What are some experience you had with it? And more importantly, at the end, is how many more judges do you think we need to get going so we can, you know, get people their hearings?

Yeah, no, that's a great question. I was an immigration judge for just over eight years, and the York Immigration Court was a detained facility. So my courtroom was actually attached to the York County prison, and a lot of the respondents, the aliens who appeared before me, were in detention. I'd also see people come in via video teleconference,

from a federal correctional institution, Allenwood and FCI Moshannon. I also had jurisdiction over the entire Pennsylvania state correctional system. So I had a lot of people. I did about 21,000 cases all told, issued somewhere between 13,000 and 15,000 decisions, and handled about 5,000 more bonds. So

When an individual is placed into removal proceedings, when DHS alleges that person is removable from the United States,

they put them into what are called removal proceedings. Those removal proceedings are overseen by immigration judges. I wasn't an Article III judge. I wasn't a federal district court or circuit court judge. I was all the way down at the bottom of the ladder. I was an administrative judge adjudicating administrative hearings. I worked for the Attorney General

in the Department of Justice. And by law, the Attorney General makes all immigration decisions in the United States. And Ms. Bondi is a very, very active individual, but she can't possibly hear hundreds of thousands of cases a year. So by law, that power is delegated down to immigration judges. And we have about 732 of them on the bench right now.

During the course of those immigration hearings, we determined whether aliens are removable from the United States and if they are, whether they have any relief as we referred to it that would allow them to stay in the United States. Most common form of relief, of course, is asylum, probably the one that people are most familiar with. But

But there are also other forms of relief that provide aliens who are removable from the United States with green cards. And occasionally we get individuals who are alleged to be aliens who argue that they, in fact, are citizens. They derive citizenship through a parent or some other means and that, in fact, they're not removable at all.

And because it was a detained court, in addition to determining whether people were removable and whether they were eligible for any relief, I also had to determine whether they were eligible for any bond. A lot of the people that I saw before me had crimes that barred them from bond, but other individuals were amenable to bond, which is the term that we use in the

The only question was whether they posed a danger to the community or the national security or whether they posed a flight risk. And as the numbers I've just told you before suggest, it's a volume business. There were days when 20 people would come in and they all wanted to go home. And then there were days that 20 people would come in at 15 of them.

wanted to file some sort of application or wanted to contest the removal. So, yeah, that's more or less how it goes. Most of the people, by the way, most of the aliens who appear in immigration court admit that they are, in fact, removable. It's to get to that second stage, that release stage that they're really seeking. But some of them realize, especially in detention, they don't have anything going for them. They are removable. They just want to go home.

Art, how long – because we hear about the case backlog for immigration judges all the time. How long are people waiting to get that court date right now?

You know, that's actually a great question. In a detained court right now, it's about 46 days. So 46 days from the time that the alien first shows up in court until a final order is issued, either an order of removal or granting them some sort of protection. Outside the detention setting, however, it could be four or five years. It could be 10 years. Some cases have been pending for 20 years or more.

And there was a procedure that was very popular under the Biden administration called administrative closure, in which your case is basically put on hold indefinitely. And in those indefinite cases, when the Biden administration last published statistics, and when I tell you what the last statistic they published, it'll explain why they stopped doing it. The average case was administratively closed for 17 years. So, again,

Again, detention is a very quick procedure. As I mentioned before, it's about 46 days right now. But when I left the bench, it was a lot closer to about three weeks. Immigration cases can move very quickly when all the parties believe they should. But as the Supreme Court has noted, back in the 80s, every person,

continuance of a case involving a non-detained alien works in the alien's favor. And for that reason, aliens try to drag it out as much as possible when they're not in custody. So there's millions of people waiting to see an immigration judge in the United States. The last number I heard of in 2024 was 3.7 million. And that's just pending deportation cases. How many more judges do you think need to be hired and trained to get through this backlog?

Let me add one caveat. You're right about the 3.7 million number. But what most Americans don't appreciate is that under policies that were implemented by the Biden administration, 700,000 other cases were either dismissed or terminated or administratively closed.

wanted them off the docket. It wanted to use its prosecutorial discretion to allow individuals, many of whom

don't actually have any status in the United States to, you know, remain here anyway. And it's an important point. But with respect to how many more judges we need, we need to double the cadre. We need to have about 1,500 immigration judges on the bench in order to handle the flow that we have. These numbers have jumped up exponentially in recent years. You know, as recently as six years ago, it was about a million.

So, you know, the Biden border disaster has really had an impact on the courts. We have just about 45 seconds left, and then we're going to be coming back with more from Art Arthur here in just a moment. He is the fellow in law and policy at the Center for Immigration Studies and a former U.S. immigration judge. You can follow all the work the Center for Immigration Studies does at CIS.org.

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Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds with the host, Chuck Warren. I'm Sam Stone. On the line with us, Art Arthur, internationally recognized expert on national security and immigration and a resident fellow in law and policy at the Center for Immigration Studies. Art, before we went to break, we were talking about, obviously, the backlog of cases in the system. But what do you think?

Key to this new administration, renewed administration, whatever you want to call it, is stopping the flow coming north. And you had an interesting piece in The Epoch Times about Marco Rubio's visit to El Salvador and Guatemala. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Sure, absolutely. It's important to note that most of the people, most of the migrants who have come to the United States in recent years, you know, didn't come here.

directly from Mexico. They're not Mexican nationals. They've come from all over the world, and they traveled through Mexico and through Central America on their way to the United States. Every country in the Western Hemisphere, except for Cuba and Guyana, grants some sort of asylum relief. And logically, those individuals that they were truly fleeing persecution would stop in the first country they got to to apply for that relief.

So fortunately, while Secretary of State Marco Rubio was in Central America, he secured the assent of both Guatemala and El Salvador to take third country nationals who have been apprehended at the southwest border and many who are under final orders of removal. Because when people are removed, we have to send them someplace. And

when aliens home countries don't accept them, we refer to those as recalcitrant countries, we don't have any place to send them. So it was absolutely crucial that President Trump's deportation agenda to Tom Homan's vision that we have third countries that we can send them to. And fortunately, Guatemala and El Salvador stepped up to the plate. And I have a feeling that probably we're going to see a couple more countries

agree to take some of the load off. We're regional partners. We should share that regional load. And it speaks to Marco Rubio's, you know, ability, his diplomas, the abilities, his status in the Americas, that he was able to secure those agreements. That's a big ask for foreign countries. You know, again, Guatemala, Nayib Bukele, and El Salvador. Step to the plate.

One of the issues, obviously, that the left likes to keep bringing up is the conditions in Latin America, the conditions in various parts of the world that these migrants are coming from. But data keeps coming out that a lot of these folks are turning around and going and vacationing back in their homes. I think in Britain, like 34 percent had gone to vacation in their country of origin.

The truth is that there really aren't many countries on earth that the population or in a large scale would really qualify for refugee status. Correct.

Yeah, no, that's absolutely true. And you touch on a critical point. About eight years ago, seven years ago, President Trump was blasted for using an earthy epithet to describe certain countries from which migrants come. And yet, if you listen to Democrats' arguments about how unfit most of the countries in the Americas are, they agree with him. So

So, yeah, I mean, that's an important point. But most of the people who come here are economic migrants. When I was an immigration judge, I granted asylum about 9 percent of the time, which meant that I denied it about 91 percent of the time because those claims that people were making just didn't meet the asylum standard. They were really coming here for a better life, which is great, except for the fact that, one, it's not legal and two, it doesn't satisfy immigrants.

the definition of persecution under our law, and in order to be granted asylum, you must be fleeing persecution based on race, religion, nationality, your membership at a particular social group or political opinion, not because you can't make enough money back home. Art, we have two minutes left here. First of all, while you were talking, Jason Chaffetz texted me. I told him we were talking to you. He told me to tell you hello. He says you're a great guy. So Jason Chaffetz says hi. All right.

One of the best bosses I ever had. That's wonderful. Yeah, he's a great guy. We love him. So now we have a minute and a half left because of me. Question. What are the three things that you think Congress should pass regarding immigration that would have an amazing effect on this country and stopping the flow of illegal immigration? That's easy. First, expand detention. If people are detained, they're not going to come. Second,

Second, limit asylum to only people who either enter the United States legally and then apply or alternatively who show up at our ports of entry. Don't overwhelm Border Patrol agents with a bunch of other people. And three, put real teeth into the warrants that ICE officers issue for criminals. We have sanctuary cities that are blocking ICE's ability to take criminals off the street. That needs to end.

Fantastic stuff there, Art. We really appreciate having you on the program. Thank you so much for joining us today. Folks, you can follow all of Art Arthur's work at CIS.org. He has a number of fantastic pieces there. And Breaking Battlegrounds is going to be coming back with more in just a moment from a friend of the program, Aaron Sabarium. So stay tuned for that. Breaking Battlegrounds, back in a minute.

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Don't wait. Head to GoDaddy.com or Name.com, type in your name.vote, and get started today. Because after all, every pet deserves a web address that's as special as they are. Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds. Our next guest up is a friend of the program, Aaron Sabarium, staff writer at the Washington Free Beacon. You can follow him on X at Aaron Sabarium. Aaron, thank you so much for joining us again, and welcome to the program.

Thank you for having me. So you have a great exclusive article this week on Free Beacon. At the University of Michigan, DEI now hides in the Office of Community Culture. Tell us how you got the lead on this, what they're doing, and would we be surprised if a lot of other universities are not doing the same thing?

Yeah. So, I mean, uh, the first person I think who noticed this was Mark Perry. Uh, he is a retired, uh, professor at the university of Michigan's Flint campus. Uh, and he just, I think started trolling around the website and, and, uh,

realized that they had rebranded all of their DEI initiatives as this new office of community culture without changing the underlying substance. And I just started looking myself and it turned out, yeah.

All of the DEI programs appear to still be in effect. They've just been taken off of public-facing websites, and the words DEI have been scrubbed from a lot of the public-facing materials. And this is something that we've been seeing a little bit with some of the corporations, with some of the government agencies, where they're trying to sort of rebrand and hide DEI.

Are they going to be successful or are there more guys like Perry out there who are right now – people are aware of this and they're going to be hunting it down? I mean, I think it's a mix, right? People like me and Mark Perry and others are going to hunt it down. But there's also a lot of it out there. And –

So I suspect you're going to see a pretty wide divergence between institutions. Some of them are going to be more successful at hiding it than others. Some of them may not try that hard to hide it, but I think others will. And I suspect that, you know, this was actually at the University of Michigan School of Nursing. I think DEI is especially dug in in medicine. And so there you really are going to see

a concerted effort to defy Trump's executive orders. Maybe not as much in corporate America. Why do you think the medical field is so beholden to DEI? Because that seems like a field, and you've, I wanted to touch on your piece about Brown misrepresenting the Free Beacon Report, but

That seems like a field where clinical skills, competency would rule the day, and no one would ever want to disagree with that. And yet, as you point out, this is an area where, boy, DEI and these ideas have really dug in and made a nest. Yeah, I think it's a couple reasons. One is that medicine may be insulated from certain drugs.

of market pressures that regular old corporate America isn't. And that may, for whatever reason, make them more willing to embrace DEI, even as the corporate sector is turning away from it. I think the other thing is

is that the field of public health, which is not the same thing exactly with medicine, but it's related. The field of public health has always been very, very liberal. Yes. Because the organizing premise of public health is that social,

social structures shape individual biological health. And I think as those ideas have kind of cross pollinated across medical institutions and got, and then intersected with the critical race theory and resectionality stuff, that process has really deeply embedded, um,

into medicine in a way that it just it hasn't been embedded quite as deeply into other fields. I don't want to I don't want to understate it in other fields. But if you look at, say, law, for example, where there is a lot of DEI, at least in law, like law firms have

backed away from the flagrantly illegal racial fellowships that they were doing, medicine, they're just going full steam ahead with it. You know, a good story, Aaron, for you to do is to contact a couple dozen University of Michigan parents who are paying for tuition and ask them if they're okay that Michigan has spent $250 million on DEI since 2016.

I'd love to hear it. I'd love to. And contact them around the time they send the tuition checks in. Yeah. As Chuck is someone who sent in a lot of tuition checks over the years. I mean, literally. I mean, it would be a really funny story, actually, if they knew, because they don't know. How does, regarding this story, and you've done stories in the past and going forward, how did the University of Michigan respond when you started inquiring about this? Did they sort of, were they open and communicated with you, or did they just start trying to give you the old,

They didn't respond at all. I mean, look, maybe I asked if there was more context or this was a mistake. They could have told me that, but they didn't. Some places are more communicative than others. University of Michigan seems to be taking the just keep your head down and don't say anything approach, which...

Sometimes works, sometimes doesn't. I think in this case, it's probably a bit too big of a story for it to totally work. And now they've they I guess they don't really have any control of the narrative because they haven't said anything to contradict my reporting. One school that appears to be at least communicating back is Brown. You had a piece out on February 4th. Brown Medical School gives DEI more weight than clinical skills says.

in promotion criteria for faculty. And then their president actually came back and disputed that. But in reading it, he doesn't actually seem to dispute that this is going on. He just sort of disputes the value of it. Well, yeah. I mean, are you referring to what the dean of the medical school said? Yeah. People who inquired? Yeah. So he doesn't actually...

contradict a single part of the story. He just argues that it's, you know, missing context or whatever. But, but when you look at what they said, um,

They actually lied. Well, maybe lie is too strong a word, but they materially misrepresented the contents of our report because they claimed that we had omitted certain distinctions between different faculty roles that we addressed explicitly. We said the criteria and the weights are not the same for every role and gave examples, and they...

that we had not addressed that. And we had. And it's right there in the story. And I told them this after they sent the statement around. I contacted them and said, hey, you know, this is wrong. Can you please correct it? And they haven't. So...

That's another way that the institutions will resist is they just claim it's all been a big misunderstanding. And in the process of claiming that, they will themselves actively mischaracterize the reporter, the report that surfaced the information. Is this a relic of the media environment from five, six years ago, even when they could get away with saying things that are, you know,

Very far from the truth. And the echo chamber would reinforce that message. Have they not realized that now there are people like you out there, Free Beacon, all these other organizations that are on top of this and aren't going to let this stuff slide?

I think some of them maybe are slowly realizing it, but it's going to be a painful process for them. And it's not just that there's more scrutiny on it from reporters. It's that after...

after Elon Musk bought Twitter, it just became harder to hide this stuff. Because, right, it used to be that the fact checkers at Twitter were broadly aligned with the broader kind of media university NGO apparatus and would...

take down or de-boost content that painted these institutions in a really negative light. But now, not only does Twitter not take the content down, I think X actually seems to privilege the content that's critical of universities and other similar institutions. And that's become a real problem for them because it's really hard to hide it now. So Trump, as you know...

issued an executive order that national institutes of health moved to cap government funding at 15% for indirect research cost. One of your colleagues had an article about Harvard Medical School citing these

NIH cuts encourage distressed students to take advantage of Countway Cuddles pet therapy. It's funny. I had a friend who's a fundraiser here in Arizona whose daughter is out of state and is going to medical school and serving in a research category. And they laid everybody off this week because of this, because of the 15 percent, said we can't do it.

I started laughing when she told me that. She asked if I put in touch with the senator who I knew what she did. He gave her, you know, he appreciated it, gave her two points. But do you see this becoming a real battle here that they can't keep their indirect costs at 15 percent? Do you think the Trump administration goes, OK, we'll go 25? Or do they just all start laying off a bunch of these medical researchers and saying this is all Trump's fault? Now your grandma's going to die of cancer in 10 years.

Yeah, I don't know. I mean, my guess, though I could be wrong, is that it will be a kind of negotiation and eventually they'll settle at a cap that is a little less draconian. Because, yeah, from my understanding, which could be wrong, but my understanding is that there are some

some institutions that really their entire financial structure assumed their ability to recoup a large percentage of grants. And if they can't do that anymore, they really are going to have trouble keeping the lights on. And that would be a problem for real biomedical research. But, you know, I do think that the, the goal I would think is to, you know,

pressure these institutions to cut superfluous roles like dei so that if you're any indirect cost right that are charged to the grants uh are going to actually keeping the lights on and buying lab equipment

going to, you know, a DEI program. That's the problem, right? And I would also just add that although I'm not sure that this particular proposal that Trump has come out with is workable, you know, I have some

somewhat limited sympathy for the institutions complaining about this because they are the ones who immolated their own credibility and embedded DEI into every aspect of their operations and infrastructure. So of course, when that highly toxic ideology, when eventually the backlash to it came, they

They chose to embed this toxic ideology everywhere. They chose to basically yoke the scientific enterprise, the DEI. So, you know, this is what you get. And people warned about this and said, you know, it's going to be a problem for science funding down the line. No one did anything. They just kept on going because they never thought the day would come. Now the day has come. It was very foreseeable. So, like, yeah, I don't want to prevent anything.

answer research from being done, but I also don't have a lot of sympathy for the places that are currently making that claim. Well, I think what's really going to be important here the next decade, and it's due to people like you, it's due to Dodge, and I'm going to give you a lot of credit, Aaron, is you have a lot of people, people we know, Sam and I know, who are not really into politics. Now they just want to know what the government's spending money on.

It's like they like this audit. They like this investigative stuff. Like, again, if you did a story in contact around time to mail in tuition and University of Michigan said, how do you feel that they spent $250 million on DEI? There'd be a revolt in Michigan, I'm telling you, because there's parents sacrificing taking mortgages out to send their kid to school.

And it's fascinating. So kudos to you for doing the work. Aaron, we have just about one minute left here. I want to throw one last question at you. Democrats seem like they're in the middle of trying to sort of muddy the waters on DEI by calling, you know, for instance, the Doge team that Musk has brought in, DEI hires and all of this. Do you think that is a successful tactic on their part?

Not really. I think at this point, I mean, I mean, I think what's going to be more effective for them is if Doge actually cuts things that are important and causes chaos that materially affects the average voter. That will become an effective line of attack. But, you know, complaining a lot of the things are DEI hires. I mean, this just doesn't pass the smell test. One of the guys literally wrote a computer program that can decipher things.

ancient scrolls that are too brittle to be read by human hands. Like this isn't a stupid guy, right? These are, these are clearly very smart people. They might be, maybe they have bad ideas. Maybe they're going about it wrong, but these are, these are smart guys. Absolutely. Aaron Sabarium. Thank you so much for joining us. Once again, we love having you on the program. Look forward to having you back in the future.

Folks, you can follow him on X at Aaron Sabarium or at the Washington Free Beacon Breaking Battlegrounds. We'll be back on the air next week. I say this every election cycle and I'll say it again. The 2024 political field was intense. So don't get left behind in 2025. If you're running for office, the first thing on your to-do list should be securing your name on the web.

With a yourname.vote domain from GoDaddy.com, you'll stand out and make your mark. Don't wait. Get yours today.

Welcome to the podcast portion of Breaking Battlegrounds with yours Chuck Warren. I'm Sam Stone. Our podcast guest today, Curtis Gilbreth, an entrepreneur, wannabe poker pro, and working his way to the WPT World Championship in Las Vegas, where over 2,300 players will enter the $10,000 buy-in tournament and possibly win part of a $24 million purse. Last year's winner took home $2.3 million, which is not a bad payday.

But it's a lot harder work than people think. Curtis, what started you down this road to try to become – you're a successful entrepreneur. You've done a lot of things in your life. What started you down this road to become a poker pro?

You know, that's a great question because it is a grind. I got hooked younger and in my younger years. I remember the ESPN days of having the World Series of Poker on ESPN and watching a guy in 2003. His name's Chris Moneymaker, a guy from Tennessee, just an average Joe. Is Chris Moneymaker his Christian name or just a name he gave himself? Yeah.

I think that was his real name. Anyway, go ahead. Go ahead, Curtis. Yeah, so I got hooked then. I tried to stab at going pro in my early 20s. Of course, I was a little more foolish back then and thought I could just crush it. Part of becoming a poker pro is managing your bankroll, and I didn't manage it well in my early 20s. As

As I have gotten older, my wife's like, you really enjoy poker. You should really play. And so I've been playing a lot more and I've been winning. And my wife's like, why don't you go big? You know, so I got to give it to the. So what's the biggest. Chuck, there's going to be a lot of men. We need to cut that clip right there for them. We got to armor them. Asking for phone numbers for her siblings. Yeah. What's the biggest pot you've won before you started doing the tournaments with Just Like Friends?

Biggest pot, you know, I've brought home three, 4,000. You know, I think my biggest was 7,200, 7,500. So, you know, it just depends on, on, you know, what you're buying in with, you know, if you're buying in with 500, your,

You're, you know, you're probably going to your max that you could probably take home is, you know, maybe twenty five hundred or you can lose it all right. You know, but if you're buying in bigger, you know, the swings both ways are bigger as well. Are you a math guy? Because poker in the last decade has become increasingly tied to game theory and a lot of guys getting into it who are mathematical geniuses, quite frankly.

Yeah, that's the interesting thing about poker. I would say I dip my toe in the math side. You have to understand the math side because you are playing against these guys that, you know, they have tables and equations and, you know, things that they do. But I'm more of a feeling guy. I'm more of reading them.

you know, looking for kills, looking for, you know, cues that kind of tell me what's going on in their mind. I was in a tournament in L.A. that I placed fourth in, but there was the one guy, every time he had a good hand, there was like a little vein in his

chin that kind of popped out a little bit. It was interesting. Yeah, so I was able to take him down for a couple big pots and make it to the final table there. You know what? I always did pretty well reading people at the tables, but I'm just going to give this one out there. Asian women, I could never read them at all. They are like stone-blank faces. They killed me. So, Curtis, how does one enter these poker tournaments and to be able to

um, get to the major tournaments? What, what has to happen for you to start doing these poker tournaments and then get enough cloud or is it winnings or points that get you to the more major tournaments? Your bankroll. Uh, you know, there are some of those bigger tournaments that are more exclusive to invitation only. Uh, those used to be smaller buy-ins or, you know, and, and going from there, but now you have to have real, real money. And what I'm talking is, you know, uh,

In the hundreds to, you know, thousands of dollars, even seven figures to get into those big invitationals. The one that I'm considering doing in December at the WVT, it's a $10,000 buy-in. And anybody with 10 grand can enter. So you'll see celebrities, you'll see some, you know, former ballplayers at these tournaments as well.

So what separates an amateur from a pro besides obviously money and winning? But what are some of the personality traits, preparation? What separates an amateur from a pro? Yeah, that's always a great question. I think...

Before you even consider becoming a pro, you have to master, like Sam said earlier, the math, the odds, the different strategies. There's different strategies of poker. And you really have to get the practice in. That's why I'm down here in Texas. Texas right now is the mecca of poker because there's a loophole that you can't have a gambling organization, but you can have a private club. So how many private clubs are there? How many?

private poker clubs are there? Oh, just between San Antonio and Austin, I'd have to say there's 45 to 60. Yeah. It's a major boom right now in Texas. In California, for instance, and maybe this has changed, but I know in the past...

Poker is legal where slot machines and blackjack are not because poker is not actually a game of chance. It is a game of skill. Yes, you are correct. So anyway, I interrupted you on that. So you go around, you do these clubs, you get money, but what is the big difference between the amateur and the pro?

I think really like EQ and the mental toughness, the emotional control. A lot of amateurs, they'll ride the wave of the roller coaster of ups and downs, and sometimes they'll get on a really good run, is what we call it in poker, and then they'll think they're invincible and they'll crash out. I think most seasoned pros know that the highs and lows will

will come, but you got to stay even EQ with your emotions and your mental toughness. And then really studying and reviewing play. I keep a journal, hands that I may have misread. I write down, you know, I'll take a step, I'll step out, I'll write notes, what I did wrong, where I may have missed a cue. So there's a lot of like

preparation for these bigger tournaments. I'll do smaller tournaments and I'll try different strategies to see how I play there. So, you know, someone might consider what I'm doing weird or strange or out of the box in a smaller tournament and they'll, I'll catch them off guard. But my whole goal there is to see how I can play that particular strategy within, you know, that smaller game. So when I go to a bigger game, maybe I need to,

Maybe I'm playing against, like Sam said, someone that's really into the math. They understand that. Well, what's the strategy that I can counteract that person that's just solely playing the math of the game versus maybe going after someone that's more about feeling and emotion, if that makes sense. Yeah. Curtis, one of the things I think most people don't understand, so when you enter the WPT World Championship, for instance,

You know, to advance to anywhere near the the winner's circle to get a payday, you're sitting there for hours and hours, day after day for multiple days. And you've got to keep your focus. And, you know, you're it's physically grueling. It's mentally grueling. How do you prepare for that part of the challenge?

Oh, that's a great question. I would say diet and health is probably the biggest. You know, anytime I'm going into a big tournament, I'm not eating a bunch of junk food the day before. I'm eating really clean. I'm, you know, doing meditation in the morning. I'm journaling. I'm doing those things that I think I applied in my entrepreneurial career. Like if I eat unhealthy, I'm not going to be as sharp. I'm not going to be as clear-minded. And then

you know, a lot of times I listen to a really good book while I'm playing. So I'm not so caught up into the time aspect. Like, you know, a book could be seven, eight hours of listening. I can easily get through a book within the two days. I'm not listening the whole time, but there's definitely times when you're playing those tournaments that you go cold, your seat is cold. And so you just have to be willing to,

sit there and wait until your seat gets hot and you start getting hands. Cause you know, there's a lot of hands you get. And if you're playing, you know, they call it, um, you know, if you're, if you're playing a lot more hands, you're, you're going to lose a lot more than you are going to win. You know, it's just how the odds work. You're playing against 10 other players that are also looking for the best hands as well. Two, two final questions. First, what's the best book people can read about poker? It could be a biography, but what's the best book you would recommend people can read about poker?

It is going to sound cheesy. I knew you were going to ask me this question, so I have it right here in front of me. It's called Secrets of a Professional Tournament Poker Player. That is literally the essential guide. Jonathan Little wrote that. It was originally published in 2011, and he's updated it since. It's a great book, especially for someone that really wants to play more local big tournaments. It's a great book to have an advantage over everybody else. All right, final question here.

What is your brand going to be? Are you going to start wearing all black, Fat Man Party Hawaiian shirts, ponytail, man bun? What are you doing? What can we be looking for? I wear bandanas. So I wear those hippie bandanas. I'll let my hair grow out a little bit. So you'll see me with a head bandana and something to turn it.

Love it. Curtis Gilbert, thank you so much for joining us, and we're wishing you luck in all of those tournaments, but looking forward to hopefully seeing some clips of you on TV from the World Series. Thank you, gentlemen. Thanks for having me on. Have a good day.

Well, Sam, are you a big poker player? I used to be a lot. I used to play a lot with reporters in college when reporters got along with people like us, but I don't now. So there was a period in my 20s and early 30s when I was making five or six grand a month pretty reliably playing poker at casinos here in Arizona and then going in weekends to Las Vegas. It's actually one of the things that got me into math.

And then when the math revolution hit and I wasn't playing as much anymore. People became more skilled.

big convention times because then they're all coming down from the convention. They got their badges. Right, right, right. They're throwing money down on that table and they're just gambling stupidly. Yeah, yeah. And you could just rake them over the coals. So I think more or less you and I and Kylie Speed is bingo now. We just do bingo on a Tuesday night. Yeah, pretty much that's where I'm at. I mean I did – so I did – the best win I ever had was one tournament in Vegas with a $2,500 entry. I won $58,000. Wow.

finish tied for first. Finally, the last two of us just agreed to split the final pot because we were sitting there going back and forth. What did you buy with your winnings?

So at that time, I paid off a bunch of debt and I bought a sleep number bed. That bed, by the way, didn't die until like this year. That was the best investment I have ever made in my life. That sucker was fantastic. Before we get Kylie on for Kylie's Corner, everybody's favorite. So since 25 days since Trump's inauguration, CNN has mentioned egg prices 45 times. Yeah.

In the 25 days before the inauguration, they did not mention egg prices once. At MSNBC, the 25 days since Trump's inauguration, they mentioned egg prices 80 times. The 25 days before the inauguration, they mentioned egg prices just once. These – you just can't trust them. No, and this one bothers me because, look –

This bird flu thing is just totally distorting the market, and you can't just wave a magic wand and create laying hens. That takes about a year after they're born, hatched, obviously. It takes about a year for them to start laying eggs. Well, it takes six months. I talked to an egg producer today. It takes six months.

to start producing. Yeah. A year is when they're really good. But generally, a chicken will do one egg a day. Some do multiple eggs a day. Those are the winners. So anyway. So folks, we're going to have Kylie's Corner on here. And by the way, next week, we'll be introducing the Kylie's Corner theme song. She has a jingle now. A very, my very own theme song. I've made it. It's being recorded this week? She has her jingle. It's wonderful, isn't it, Kylie? It's amazing. People will be humming it on the subways in New York. Does the jingle include zzzz?

It has the word mayhem in it. Okay. Yeah. We're pretty excited about it. Order and mayhem. We have set it around. It's been done and done very much by the lovely Brennan Evans, who's a musician out of Nashville. And it's going to be fun. She's recording it this week. And Kylie's got a jingle. As long as we don't get Kylie put on the Ziz hit list.

I just can't wait for people to hear it. It is so great. And today I have mayhem and murder. We got a little mayhem in LA at the Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety. And then we got a murder in Mexico I want to talk about. Okay. So first, I want to share this story from the Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety because I think it's just going to point out what this process looks like for everyone who lost their homes from the fires. Right.

But this guy online was sharing his account of his mom whose home burned down. And she made a claim with the insurer to rebuild the home. And...

To process plant machines, you need the blueprints. So obviously the blueprints of the home were in the home that burned down. But the Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety, they have blueprints on file. But they just need the architect to sign off. Right. So – Let's start out with you should not need your architect to sign off on handing over the blueprints to your own home. But OK. Agree. Agree. Well, I'm wondering what happens when like it gets too old to do that. Yeah. But –

That's the process. That process took a week. So the guy goes down there to get his blueprints for his mom's home. And the Department of Public and Safety said the architect signed the wrong part of the paper so they won't give him the blueprints. He said the instructions talked about nothing about where to sign. He just said they needed to sign the paper. And the clerk said he signed over the seal. He's supposed to sign next to the seal. His friend said, so what? It is signed. Can I please just get my blueprints?

And the clerk said, but he signed the wrong part of the paper. And his friend goes, you know, my mom's house burned down. And every day this gets delayed is another day she can't get her claim processed. And the clerk responds with, so what? It's so cold and callous.

It's crazy. This is kind of one of my fundamental problems with Democrats' love of bureaucracy, Chuck and Kylie, because they love to talk all the time about how empathetic they are to people. Right. But bureaucracies are the least empathetic institutions on the planet. Oh, 100%. And so this obsession with bureaucracy on the left just totally betrays their words about empathy. And they're the first people to say how callous cops speak.

Right. Who face death and mayhem and people lying every day. They're setting a desk and making life – I mean the whole point of your bureaucracy is to make life easier and government more efficient for the taxpayer. They don't seem to understand that. Not at all. No. I did see a tweet that said they're OK with the IRS hiring 87,000 to audit us, but they're not OK with us auditing them. Yeah, exactly. That makes sense. 100% spot on.

But I actually have a crazy murder story that I want to share it. Yeah, because I think, I don't know if I had a murder last week. Chuck, it's not the death penalty. You're not supposed to be cheering. We don't know. Give me a chance. Hear me out. Hear me out. Go ahead. This murder is...

You know, love fueled. So it's about a 17 year old influencer, TikTok influencer, Marianne Gonzaga. So she's known for she had a baby. So she's known for her motherhood and like lifestyle content. She's built over 445,000 followers. She was friends with this woman, Valentina Gonzaga.

And she's 18 years old. She's also famous on TikTok for dancing. I don't know. I've never knew who these people were until this. But she also has over 500,000 followers. Everyone thought they were friends online. They would comment, share each other's stuff, just be supportive. Well, on February 5th, Marianne flew 800 miles to Mexico City, which is where Valentina lived. She got off the plane, went straight there, did not call her, did not text her, was just waiting outside until she got home so that she could murder her.

So she lurked outside the apartment and forced her way inside. Once she got in, she stabbed her 14 times in the neck, the head, the face. There was furniture that was flipped. Oh, my goodness. Blood, feelings, walls, glass shattered. Valentina did not die. She could still possibly die. She's in a medically induced coma. When her boyfriend got home, he called the cops. She was still alive, fighting for her life.

And it turns out the reason Marianne did this and went crazy was because Valentina's boyfriend was her boyfriend first and got her pregnant, left her before the baby was born to be with Valentina. Well, I. The crazy thing is. Sounds like he's sounds like he's the one. It sounds like he's the one that should have gone after.

Yeah, if someone was getting a shank over that episode, it should have been him. How did he get off? She should only get five years in prison because she's under the age of 18. That law just needs to change. Yeah, look, if you fly, if you hop on an airplane and fly somewhere and stab somebody to death. And she tried to get home, but they obviously arrested her prior to that. If you're old enough to make a cognitive decision that you're going to change your gender, you should be able to face the price of justice.

Oh, man, that's a horrible story. Horrible. Horrible. Yeah. Well, that's a pretty good Kylie's Corner story. You got any more today?

No, I just think TCU needs tougher punishment on their athletes. Yeah. Yeah. We'll talk about that more next week. I'm sure we'll make sure we cover that case next week. Folks, just so you know, Kylie was supposed to go into Southern Florida for a wedding. She only learned this week what city again. So Kylie, I'm glad you got to the right city and booked the right flight. That's very, very important. I have a very loving husband who's very good at booking flights. He books your flights. You don't do it. You do. No, I don't. Yeah.

Yeah, wait, Kylie, did you? I gotta ask, though, this is, because I've been on this since the start. I gotta, before we get, before we end this, do you see this thing about the Zizian leader faking his own death and then getting released by the police or something like this? What's?

I didn't see that he got released by the police. I saw that he faked his death. So the Zizian Cole is a case that we talked about last time. Right, right. So you got to stream that episode. But I did hear that he faked his own death until he got arrested and they realized that that wasn't him. Or that was him. Wow. All right. Well. The fake death was in 2021. Well, folks, we hope you enjoyed the show this week. We thought it was fantastic. And always you can follow us on BreakingBattlegrounds.vote.

You can get a subscription on Substack, which we recommend. You can always follow us wherever you get your podcasts. On behalf of Jeremy, Kylie, who finally got to the right place in Florida, Sam and myself, have a fantastic weekend. And next week, the introduction of Kylie's Corner Jingle. You'll love it. Have a good weekend. Bye-bye.